


To set the Ship aFire

by Claudia_Lilith



Category: Harry Potter - J. K. Rowling
Genre: Abuse, Childhood Abuse, Gen, Slytherin Harry
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2017-12-01
Updated: 2017-12-01
Packaged: 2019-02-09 01:47:10
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,244
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/12877581
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Claudia_Lilith/pseuds/Claudia_Lilith
Summary: The Wizarding World is full of many wonders, but to a child's jaded eyes it's filled with many lies.





	To set the Ship aFire

**Author's Note:**

> This is really angsty, like REALLY REALLY angsty. Please heed warnings.

In Little Whining there is a perfectly normal little neighborhood. In this perfectly normal neighborhood there is a perfectly normal street. Privet Drive has houses lined against the road, all with perfect white picket fences, perfectly mowed lawns, and shiny new sports cars.

Number Four Privet Drive is inhabited by people who would like you to think they are perfectly normal. Petunia Dursley has a perfectly sized neck for spying on the neighbors, with a normal appetite for drama. Vernon Dursely is a perfectly normal businessman, with an odd lack of neck, and their child is a perfectly normal spoiled brat.

However, in Number Four, a small boy age ten is sitting in cupboard, wondering what makes them normal. He counts shadows as the sunlight filters into the hallway, reaching blindly in through the vent. He looks to the ceiling, frowning lightly at the uneven cut of stairs above his head. He sighs lightly and reaches to the shelf at his feet. It once held cleaning supplies. In fact a lone rubber glove sits on it still. Now it holds several pairs of dirty socks, an old beat up pair of sneakers, three pairs of pants, a pair of jeans and two shirts that look as though a small whale should be wearing them.

He has been in the cupboard for sixty four hours now. Everything smells stale, piss drips down his legs, his already bad vision blurs as he thinks about the water he surely needs on a hot summer day. Pain dulls his senses, his left hand isn’t working quite right. Dudley decided to see what would happen if you slammed someone’s hand in the door. Even Aunt Petunia looked concerned when she saw it, sending him to cupboard and relieving him of chores for so long.

The boy reaches out an unnaturally pale limb to brush a spider off his socks. Petunia will be down soon, and they might actually let him out of the cupboard today.  
tap tap.

Harry listens to his aunt's footsteps as she walks down the stairs. There are three sharp raps on the door before suddenly a rather shrill voice cuts through the stupor.  
“Freak, get up. Take a shower before your Uncle wakes, then come straight back here. No hot water, Diddikins needs a shower this morning.” The lock clicks open and Harry crawls out, grabbing his clean clothes and trips up the stairs. The cold water cuts through the comfortable numb he surrounded himself with, he scrubs his soiled clothing in the water of the shower, uses the toilet, and quickly ties his pants with a spare piece of rope he found one day in the backyard.

“Hello Aunt Petunia”, he mumbles as he slips into the kitchen. She sneers down at the scrawny boy and hands him a piece of bread that is only slightly moldy and allows him a glass of water.

“Vernon leaves for work in an hour, have breakfast ready in thirty, and then I need you to take care of the flowers in the backyard, they look a bit brown”

Probably because you never water them. Harry nods sullenly and starts preparing the pans. Freaking pigs. I wonder what would happen if I only made enough for one serving? His lips quirk up at the thought of poor Duddikins and Uncle Vernon only eating one course of any meal. He cracked the eggs, fried the bacon, all the while imagining what would happen if they actually ate themselves to death. He pictured their already protruding bellies swelling, the snap of buttons, the fabric tearing off their bodies.  
He quickly sobered when he noticed the eggs were about to burn. 

He made the plates mechanically, ignoring the pain, ignoring the way his stomach tightened at the smell, ignored the feeling of his skin stretched tight over bone, bereft of flesh to guard the fragile remains of his wasted body. Carefully maneuvering through the kitchen he set the plates down with three minutes to spare, made up a glass of Orange Juice for the pig and coffee for the whale before making his exit. 

It was still early enough that the sun wasn’t to excruciating on his skin, the sun not yet bright enough to blind him after so much darkness. Besides, the kitchen was a good enough adjustment period. The water that came out of the hose was life, Harry gulped it down as quickly as possible before he directed to stream towards the garden bed. He set the hose so the water could run down the gentle slope he had made years ago in an effort to make this job marginally easier.  
He set himself to pulling weeds, feeling thorns cut into his skin, the roughness of scraping skin, he set the weeds aside neatly before getting the wheelbarrow and sticking them there. 

He mowed the lawn, knowing full well he would not be permitted into the house until Aunt Petunia let him in. The sun began to beat down on his pale skin. Sweat stuck his hair to his face, trickled down into his eye. 

He decided organizing the shed would at least get him out of the sun. Half-way to his destination he began to sway, his head disconnected, the world narrowed and spun. He caught himself against the ground with a weak cry. The ground spun as his body was wracked with dry-heaves. A small bit of bile worked it’s way out, burning it’s way through his esophagus. 

After a good thirty minutes he manages to stop shaking, gasping in breath and staring in the general direction of the fence. It took him several moments to realize his glasses had fallen off, and several minutes after for him to locate them once more and put them on. He slowly pushed himself back up when he heard the click of the back door unlocking. Every molecule of his being rejected the idea of moving, his hands ached something terrible, random sharp pains moving from the tips of his fingers all the way up his arm.  
“Use the loo then make lunch.” Aunt Petunia snapped, eyes darting about to double check no one had seen the freak. Harry nodded as he squeezed past his aunt and walked through the house. He drank a bit more tap water from the sink after he washed his hands, and hurried over to make sandwiches for Dudley and cut up some apples for Aunt Petunia. 

He placed them on the table, washed his hands and began to clean the sitting room. It took him all of 30 minutes to dust, vacuum, and scrub every surface of the already pristine room. He moved out and vacuumed the hallway, dusted the picture frames, and scrubbed the door inside and out. He polished the stair rail, vacuumed each step, and worked through the hallway upstairs the same way he did on the ground floor. He bleached the bathroom, drank a bit more from the faucet and moved back downstairs to clean up after his cousin’s lunch. 

Harry’s Aunt sent him out front after that to trim the hedges and mow the lawn. He had re-painted the fence yesterday and weeded into the late hours of the night before.  
Around five Aunt Petunia called him back inside to make dinner and then sent him to the cupboard with a glass of water and a sandwich. 

He fell asleep listening to the sounds of the evening news.

**Author's Note:**

> I wrote this chapter four years ago and just found this and the whole outline for this fic. Welcome to this bumpy ride.


End file.
